making as-real digital theatre
TW FOR DISCUSSION AROUND QUEER QUESTIONING AND SEXUAL ASSAULT
Back in the wilds of 2021 I decided to do digital theatre for New Zealand Fringe 2022. I wanted to make a work that allowed me to perform with my friends who live in other parts of the country, and that would be COVID-safe to watch and create.
I also, as a ‘very online’ person, wanted to make a work that spoke to things I was interested in — the little stories that we run into every day on the internet without context; encouraging the audience to stalk and become voyeurs in the lives of ‘real characters’, created by me, as they went about their lives on the internet.
Thus, we made ROUGH NIGHT. It was an improvised work, told solely through video and tweets, shot haphazardly in one evening around Christmas in 2021. I think there were elements of it that I liked — and it even got nominated for Best Digital Work at Brighton Fringe! However, it was a bit too disjointed for my liking, and also the world was quite small. I wanted to make it bigger.
So came about Thank You To All My Voyeurs.
Social media is a transient space, often free from the trappings of time, and I find that Twitter encapsulates that wholly. You might retweet things from 2009, scour through some drama you’ve stumbled upon in real time, look back upon your bookmarks with a degree of ennui. It’s a place where anyone can become the main character for the day if they’re unlucky enough.
So I created a web of characters. TYTAMV contains thirteen separate characters, over an hour worth of audio, and nine digital worlds for an audience to explore. While some characters are the focal point of the story — our leads; Saz, Declan, Jamie and Liv — all other featured characters contribute to the overall story and have digital footprints that an audience can explore.
Audiences are encouraged to click about, stalk and discover our characters lives, interacting with them as though they are real people.
Because, there’s at least somewhat of a chance that they could be.
With Thank You To All My Voyeurs, I wanted to make a work that was not just realism but as-real theatre. Theatre that was wrapped so into the world that it could, without a little more investigation, be mistaken for true.
Realism is tricky, for you’re playing realistic situations, saying realistic words, set on a realistic set — but there’s also always that layer of insincerity. You’re in a theatre, you’ve come into a place strictly to see a thing. Maybe you’ve had a shitty bus trip here.
In this show, there’s none of that. Sure, you’ve clicked onto a home website, but you’re not trapped within the bounds of a theatrical space. This show takes place in real time. You’re encouraged to respond, but you don’t have to — like any Twitter interaction, really. The world itself is malleable and boundless.
Which brings me onto the challenges of creating in an as-real theatre space.
How do you tell the internal thoughts of a character when you’re not looking directly into their eyes? How can you negotiate character conflict when you’re not able to read the physicality of actors working together?
How can you discuss internalised thoughts when you can’t say them out loud?
Now, I’m not saying my script is perfect. As I sit in my office editing the audio for this show, I notice holes and things that I’d like to change up a little.
But I think it’s possible.
Enter Noisecrete, a website that would be wholly unethical and get people sued if it actually existed. How do you take private conversations and put them on the internet for audiences to listen to? Create a “start-up company” that “saves your calls online for you to remember”. Sure, they’re broadcasted to everyone on the internet, but that’s just a bug in the name of social media longevity, right?
You want to remember the calls you had with your therapist?
Or the time your mate asked you out?
Noisecrete is a tool I utilise in this show to weave in voice acting with the written script. Approximately an hour worth of audio is posted alongside main events in this show. You can read a tweet about someone having a hard day and then hear a section of why it sucked so much. I feel like having actors perform sections of the work in a non-unrealistic way helps draw more people into the world. Twitter is fine for despair, but it doesn’t allow for a lot of humanising, and text can be so alien on a page.
Another challenge I’ve had is around what people put online.
See, I’m an oversharer. I scream my thoughts into the online void and sometimes people reply.
But… not everyone is.
How do you foreshadow that a character is coming to terms with his sexuality, without putting it out there on his Twitter openly?
How do you talk about a character being sexually assaulted without actively talking about it because she wants to keep it hidden?
There’s no “voicing thoughts out loud” thing like there is in traditional theatre. Half these people don’t even want to talk about what they’re going through, and having them actively speak exactly what they’re feeling out loud breaks the format and destroys any kind of realism I’ve been trying to create.
I feel like I’ve found some of a solution via Noisecrete. I’ve also considered — what do people like on their Twitter vs what do they retweet? Do they post on other sites or secret blogs? What’s being said with how they react to things that happen to them? How do they cry for help?
I hope I’ve at least found some semblance of a way.
I wanted to make a work that would speak to others — to stage something that’s not finished, not complete, but contains a slice of life as watched by a voyeur; something that will never truly be the exact world or feeling of a real life person, but is something that is watched as though it is.
We are all very small, and there is so much going on in the world right now. I wanted to make a work where the characters truly feel that — we are not alone as long as we have others around us, on the internet or IRL, but sometimes it really does feel like that.
Thank You To All My Voyeurs has been a mammoth undertaking. It’s been several months of writing and rewriting a script to make it fit COVID-safe theatre practices, over fifty hours of audio recording and editing, Tweeting, writing posts, and maintaining ten different Twitter accounts to make them resemble ones of real people. It’s a show I should have a co-creator for, but…
Yeah. Some of us have trouble giving over control to others.
Thanks to Hamish, Isabella, David, Jason, Pauline, Monica, Haydn, Bethany, Alan, Rebecca, Slaine, Mark, Ariadne, Shauwn, Mandy and Jack for bringing such life to my characters, as well as the numerous Fringe Festivals who have hosted us thus far. You are all the best.
